Starting with the 2026-2027 school year, the way primary, secondary and 9th grade students are evaluated will change significantly, according to the Ministry of Education.
The measure, provided for in the Pre-University Education Law (Law 198/2023), officially confirmed by the ministry, provides that teachers are obliged to award grades and qualifications based on national evaluation standards, established for each discipline in the common core.
Practically, the grades will no longer be awarded only based on the criteria established individually by each teacher, but will have to comply with a set of unitary standards, valid at the national level. The ministry talks about a “paradigm shift”, i.e. moving to a competence-centred assessment guided by national standards, with the stated aim of making the assessment clearer, comparable between schools and more oriented towards the real competences of students.
The new standards, developed by the National Center for Curriculum and Assessment and the National Center for Technology and Dual Technology Education, will set out exactly what students need to know and be able to do in each subject and at each level of study. Although the form of grading does not change – grades are maintained in primary grades, grades from 1 to 10 in middle and high school, and descriptive reports in preparatory grade and first grade – the major difference is in basing these results on clear national standards, oriented towards real skills, not just memorizing information.
Teachers will be penalized if they deviate from the new rules
According to the law, all assessments must be carried out on the basis of these standards, and compliance with them will be controlled by the school inspectorate. The Ministry clearly states that evaluating students without complying with national evaluation standards constitutes disciplinary misconduct, and teachers who assign grades without complying with approved standards and methodologies risk disciplinary sanctions.
Gabi Bartic, Chief Operating Officer at Brio.ro, the company that won the public tender to develop the new type of testing, explained to “The Truth” how the new system will be implemented and emphasized that school inspectorates, control bodies of the Ministry of Education, will have a central role in applying the new rules.
“The implementation of the standards is the responsibility of the school inspectorates, which are control bodies of the Ministry of Education. We recommend the inspectorates not to apply sanctions from the first year, because any sanction will come with the rejection of the standardization by the teachers”explained Gabi Bartic.
Regarding the preparation of teachers for this change, Bogdan Cristescu, director of the National Center for Curriculum and Evaluation, provided details for “The Truth” :
“Teachers will go through free workshops and various training programs, but from the information we have, they will not be paid extra by the Ministry.”
Professor Dragoș Iliescu, the founder of Brio, offered an international comparative perspective, suggesting that Romania can be inspired by the experience of other states that have successfully gone through similar standardization processes.
“There are countries with our profile that have gone through this standardization process and are doing very well. There is a strong, clear enough standardization in the Republic of Moldova, for example. Also, Estonia would be another example. Both are small countries, therefore the model from which we can best be inspired is the Polish one. I have always argued that Poland is the best country to compare ourselves to.”said professor Dragoș Iliescu.
Teachers’ independence will not be restricted
One of the biggest fears expressed by teachers concerns the possible restriction of professional independence in the evaluation process. Bogdan Cristescu directly addressed this concern, emphasizing that the school curriculum is itself a form of standardization, and the new standards only provide a normative framework.
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“And the syllabus is a form of standardization, and the educational environment has always had syllabuses. Are teachers somehow cut off from their independence just because they have syllabuses? Obviously not. And then, these standards are effectively a normative framework. Our approach is to guide the way in which the student ends up being graded, so that there are no longer situations where a teacher imposes that in his class you can only get a 10 under certain extreme conditions, for example”reported Bogdan Cristescu.
Gabi Bartic completed the picture, emphasizing that standardization will contribute to the elimination of unfair practices.
“It will also eliminate situations where teachers can give grades abusively, to punish students for not having their hair in a ponytail, for example, as it still happens in isolated cases”explained Gabi Bartic.
Bogdan Cristescu continued to detail how teacher flexibility will work in the new system, explaining that the assessment will have installments, similar to international testing:
“I return, the independence of the teacher will not be affected. Within the testing we will have some tranches, as is the case with every international test. Within these tranches the teacher is the one who evaluates. So even with the tranche in front, the teacher will have the possibility to give the student a B score, even if his answer was A, on the grounds that he wants to motivate him.
What standardization will do is make sure that the teacher stops there and doesn’t grade it with a C. So the teacher will have flexibility in standardizing the tests, just as they have flexibility in how they teach in the classroom, even if they have to follow a curriculum. The big advantage of the standards will be related to targeting instruction, because teachers will finally know what to look for to raise a student’s level.”
Pressure on the Ministry of Education to address urban-rural gaps
Another significant concern is related to the differences between rural and urban areas, where a grade of 5 can have completely different meanings, and rural teachers sometimes force passing grades to prevent school dropouts.
Gabi Bartic argued that standardization will bring benefits by ensuring that teachers will no longer give unjustified extra or minus points: “The purpose of school is not to lie to the child, but to educate him”.
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Dragoș Iliescu developed this argument, emphasizing that maintaining real evaluation standards is, in fact, an act of responsibility towards students:
“If we have a large mass of students who cannot pass the tests properly, and the teachers drag them after them even though they are not 5, maybe they are 2 or 3, we just lie to them this year, and then we lie to them next year, and then come the exams that put the spotlight on them, and the poor will have been left behind already a long time ago.
But if they pass standardized tests from the very beginning, their real level will be known, teachers will know better how to help them without having to lie to them. And further, the results will put additional pressure on the political factor to address the differences between rural and urban”.
The Ministry of Education claims that the modernization of the assessment system has several objectives: alignment with international tests such as PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS, reduction of discrepancies between schools and regions, use of results for individual learning plans, gradual digitization of assessments and monitoring of student progress before national exams.
The assessment based on national standards will form the basis of individual learning plans, and the results will be included in the student’s educational portfolio. Moreover, the standardized standards could lead to changes in the high school admissions process.
For students and parents, the change means that assessment should become more uniform and predictable. For teachers, it means clearer rules, but also greater responsibility in awarding grades, and the reform marks one of the most important changes in the evaluation method in recent years and will directly influence the way grades are awarded in Romanian schools.
